Florida State Board of Education Passes Plan for Racially-Based Academic Goals

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Given all of the attention thathas been directed toward the educational and academic performance of AfricanAmerican students, including the recent Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandaland the recently released report from the SchottFoundation for Public Education  thatfound that only 52 percent of Black male ninth-graders graduate from highschool four years later compared to 78 percent of White, non-Latino maleninth-graders, it is not expected that school districts around the nation tryto address this problem. The question is really how one attempt to address thisissue does.

The Florida State Board of Education recently passed a plan that sets goalsfor students in math and reading; however it is based upon their race. Therevised strategic plan passed by the board states that says that by 2018, itwants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, and 74percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, thegoals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, andblacks at 74 percent.

As anticipated, making performance goals based on race has angered many inthe community of Palm Beach County and across the state. As they stands, thegoals support a long lasting stereotype that African American youth are notable to learn as well or as much as white and Asian youth and instead of tryingto tackle the problem head on, they have decided to “dumb down the expectations”for African American kids when compared to other races.

Regardless of the changes, the fact remains that nationally with regard tomales alone, just 12 percent of black male 4th graders nationally and 11percent of those living in large central cities performed at or aboveproficient levels in reading on the 2009 National Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP), compared with 38 percent of white males in that gradenationwide, according to the report from the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition ofthe nation's urban school districts.

Among 8th graders, only 12 percentof black males across the country and 10 percent living in large citiesperformed at or above proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of whitemales in that grade nationwide.